Wetsuits Part I

Wetsuits generally: Wetsuits are made out of neoprene, which is traditionally a petroleum product. Most brands are trying to figure out more environmental ways to manufacture them. Most suits are designed either in the US or Japan and made in Thailand or China at factories. I may do some research on each brand or you can yourself, but for now let's keep it at that. Wetsuits are spoken of in terms of millimeters of thickness, usually ranging from 1.5-6mm. The thicker the mm the more cold the suit is supposed to withstand. Many feature a combination of thicknesses, so that you have more warmth in areas you do not move, and more flexibility in areas that you do (gussets, etc.). Wetsuits should always be tight fitting. Brand is a very personal thing and I will let you do your own research. Here is a list of brands (without links) in order of mainstream to retro: Oneill, Billabong, Ripcurl, Quiksilver, West, Hurley, Xcel, Isurus, Beull, Hotline,  Matuse, Patagonia, Axxe, Amsterdam, Nineplus. I am surely missing a few here, but this is just a start for where to start looking.

What I wear: Instead of tell you what to get I am going to just talk about what I wear year round. I grew up in 50 degree water and have been wearing suits for the past 26 years. I like a bit of neoprene no matter how warm the water is. I am used it and I feel it gives me a little added protection from rib bruising, the sun, and whatever may lurk beneath me. Also, I have ear problems, so as soon as the water is cold enough to give an occasional ice cream headache, around 55 degrees, I'm wearing a hood of some sort.

September: In the beginning of September I'm in a 2mm spring suit, long john, or short armed spring. It can still be hot and the water is up in the high 60s, low 70s. On the colder mornings with offshore wind I'll don my 3/2 fullsuit for the first time.

October: I'm usually wearing the 3/2 all month.

November: The 3/2 still gets a bit of action and I may add a polypro hooded shirt. Towards the end of the month, depending on the year my hooded 4/3 comes into action. I am usually reluctant to wear gloves and booties. I won't wear them unless the water is under 50 degrees and the air is under 45.

December: The hooded 4/3 comes into action, as do the 3mm booties and 1.5 mm gloves. By mid-month or towards the end of the month I might already be in the 7mm booties and 5mm gloves.

January-March: Hooded 4/3, 7mm booties, 5mm gloves. [Caveat: a lot of people wear 5/4/3s or 6/4/3s but I haven't found them necessary in the three winters I have surfed in NY. I prefer the flexibility of the hooded 4/3 over the stiffness of the thicker suits. The key is to really protect your extremities. Also the thicker the suit the harder it is to get in and out. When it's cold you usually want to expose your skin for a minimal amount of time.]

April-May: The hooded 4/3 is still in effect, but I can start pairing down on the booties and gloves. As soon as the water hits 50 degrees my feet and hands come free. I'll also start wearing the 3/2 full suit with the hooded poly pro shirt.

June: 3/2 fullsuit and if we're lucky the 2mm springsuit and long johns or wetsuit jackets can come into play.

August-July: Bye bye fullsuit. Spring suit, trunks with a vest, jackets and surf shirts.

So in the end my ideal wetsuit quiver for NY is:
- 1 wetsuit vest or neoprene jacket/surf shirt ($25-$100)
- 2mm spring suit, long john, or short arm full ($99-$200)
- Poly pro hooded shirt ($75-$100)
- 3/2mm full suit ($100-$250)
- 4/3 hooded full suit ($200-$550)
- [sometimes a 5/4/3 or 6/4/3 hooded full suit for trips up north ($200-$600)]
- 1 pair of 3mm booties ($50)
- 1 pair of 1.5 mm gloves ($50)
- 1 pair of 7mm booties (rounded toe) ($50)
- 1 pair of 5 or 7mm lobster claw gloves (you need these to surf in the winter at all) ($50)

In the end it depends on your dedication to surfing year round and living in NY. In my mind, it is a worthwhile investment. Most suits last 2-4 years and many companies have repair services, so you won't have to spend this amount every year. There are also a variety of glues that you can use to repair your own suit with.

Updated the Links and the Quikky Pro France

Good morning peoples. Just writing to say that I've updated the links with some of my favorite surf websites and other useful sites for buying gear and getting forecasts. Also, if you follow pro surfing at all, the Quiksilver Pro France is running this week. It's into Rnd 3 (the best round to watch in my opinion). The time difference with France can be rough if they run in the morning (6 hours ahead, so 8am in France is 2am in NY). Contest director Miky Picon has been running at high tide which is currently early in the morning and in the mid afternoon. Right now the comp is on hold until 2:45pm France time (8:45am NY time). To watch heat recaps or to check back for the live feed go to http://quiksilverlive.com/profrance/2012/. Yesterday the French afternoon/NY morning saw some über heaving barreling shore pound. The guys were in full gladiator mode, which is usually the best kind of comp surfing to watch—these were not ideal conditions and probably terrible for the average surfer—the kind of conditions you just wish a pro would paddle into to see if indeed some of those waves are makeable. A few 10 point rides and plenty of cringe-worthy wipeouts. Voyeuristic sadism at its finest. My pick for the win is Julian Wilson or Mick Fanning, but Slater and Parko are deadly right now. We shall see! Last note: teaching a few lessons this weekend. If I've failed to get back to you please email me. Been a little crazy with lesson inquiries, Greek/Latin translation, book review writing, paper grading, and philosophy reading. That said, back to it. Enjoy the week!

Kelly Slater on the Future of Surfing

Ripped this from PhiloSURFical's site. Pretty darn insightful.

Surf Like MP

All those weird hulls and single fins you see at the shops: this is how you're supposed to ride them.

The Grammar of Surfing

Good stormy morning everyone! I had to cancel a lesson today due to an unruly sea. So instead I am wrapping my head around Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Stanley Cavell's comments thereof. Every time I pick the book up it makes me think about surfing and how I am always explaining to my students that learning surfing is learning a new language. In Wittgensteinian terms surfing is a language, or surfing has a grammar all of its own. I want to share this quote from Cavell's Excursus on Wittgenstein's Vision of Language with you all because I think it clearly represents what I am up to in the way that I 'initiate' people into the grammar of surfing:

"Instead, then, of saying either that we tell beginners what words mean, or that we teach them what objects are, I will say: We initiate them, into the relevant forms of life held in language and gathered around the objects and persons of our world. For that to be possible, we must make ourselves exemplary and take responsibility for that assumption of authority; and the initiate must be able to follow us, in however rudimentary a way, naturally (look where our finger points, laugh at what we laugh at, comfort what we comfort, notice what we notice, find alike or remarkable or ordinary what we find alike or remarkable or ordinary, feel pain at what we feel pain at, enjoy the weather or the notion we enjoy, make the sounds we make); and he/she must want to follow us (care about our approval, like a smile better than a frown, a croon better than a croak, a pat better than a slap). "Teaching" here would mean something like "showing them what we say and do", and "accepting what they say and do as what we say and do", etc.; and this will be more than we know, or can say."

2 Week Forecast

Here's Surfline's 14-day LOLA forecast for Long Island. As you can see, Sunday and Monday look the biggest for the Hurricane Leslie swell. Then we have a drop next week on into next weekend. And then it picks back up the following week. Those days when it's reading 1-2 and 3-4 are the best for those of you new to the sport of kings. I surfed yesterday at Rockaway and while it was not anywhere near life-threatening it was still way too much juice and bump for a beginner to handle. Even the whitewater was a bit out of control. That was on a buoy reading of 7ft at 14secs. Also, I've received a few more lesson requests. Just want all to know that scheduling becomes difficult this time of year due to the increase in swell and my graduate student schedule. I am still instructing throughout the fall, but am sticking to weekends, and primarily Saturdays, only. My weekdays are now consumed by writing, reading, prepping for the class I teach, running a student journal, and surfing for myself when the swell is up. This last thing, I am sure you will understand, is very important in the development and nurturing of my own surfing skills and mental stability. I will, however, respond to each of you in turn and will try my best to schedule as many lessons as philosophy and the hurricane season allows.

What Is Wrong With Surfer Magazine's Style Post

Once again surfers say that style is "not doing too much" when the exact opposite is true. Sure it looks like you're not doing too much, but even that is a learned behavior. You're actually doing quite a lot: paddling efficiently to get into waves at the right moment, positioning your hands, looking in the direction you want to head, reading the wave, and feeling out the whole ride. Furthermore, people like Craig Anderson and myself, who have been surfing for most of our lives, have had exemplars we look up to and whom we have imitated in order to achieve effortless-looking surfing. And as Anderson's style shows and proves, one of the key aspects to good style in surfing is an ability to fold in one's back knee. If the back knee cannot or does not drop deeper than the front what you get is a twofold knock against your surfing: less power and a poo stance (because if the back knee doesn't fold then you're bending at the waist and therefore sticking out your bum). Next to back knee foldage, hand placement is also crucial. There are a number of ways to hold one's hands in surfing and how you do will solidify what kind of style you have. Some surfers know for "creepy fingers" are Bruce Irons, Rob Machado, Joel Tudor, Alex Knost, and Ando himself. Gerry Lopez had/has some of the best hand placement in the game. So yeah not looking like you're doing much is key, but so is intentional imitation of past style masters and attention to key physiological truisms.